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I have 1TB of hard disk and I don't know why but only 930gb is usable and then I have 4 partition 3 NTFS and 1 for Linux they all have 2-6gb less storage than there actual size ie: Linux partition have 300gb but there only 293gb is usable windows partition eat 4gb for no reason is there any solution for this

Kartik
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2 Answers2

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I have 1TB of hard disk and I don't know why but only 930gb is usable

Incorrect. You have 1 TB (1,000 GB) of hard disk space but only 930GiB are usable. The "i" is important. 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 Bytes. 1TiB = 1,099,511,627,776 Bytes. That means that 1 Terabyte = about 931 Gibibytes.

The problem is that Hard Drive manufacturers use Giga- and Tera- and Mega- to label their hard drives. Meanwhile, your operating system uses Gibi- and Tebi- and Mebi- to label the same drives. This is a well-known source of confusion for consumers.

I imagine the rest are similar issues.

Cliff Armstrong
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Manufacturers use 10-base numbers to state sizes of their disks. If you look at any modern HDD is written on it something like 1TB = 1.000.000.000.000 bytes. This is currently a marketing tactic. The superior unit of the byte in computer world is 1024 bytes (2^10), not 1000 (10^2). Computers use binary, not decimal and 1 TB of true computer data will be 1.099.511.627.776 bytes.

Therefore, 1.000.000.000.000 bytes of hard drive decimal size will be the equivalent of 930 GB of actual HDD space, as 1.099.511.627.776 bytes would be the equivalent of 1 TB.

Now to avoid confusion, some prefer to use KiB, MiB and so forth when referring the 1024 system.

Here's how advertised space vs. true usable space is like on current HDDs:

A/T
12/10.9 TB
10/9.09 TB
8/7.27 TB   
6/5.45 TB   
5/4.54 TB
4/3.63 TB   
3/2.72 TB   
2/1.81 TB   
1.5/1.36 TB 

1000/931 GB 
750/698 GB  
640/596 GB
500/465 GB  
320/298 GB  
250/232 GB  
200/186 GB  
160/149 GB
120/111 GB  
80/74 GB

Make sure to take this into account when investing is specific storage space.

Overmind
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